Okey Maduforo Awka Two months after the Anambra State government ordered the state to be locked down, as a means of stopping the spread of the coronavirus, private and public mortuaries in the state are now overflowing with corpses. Similarly, morticians working at those mortuaries have been lamenting the absence of personal protective equipment to protect them from contracting the disease in the line of their duties.

At the Amaka Mortuary one of the attendants told Sunday Telegraph that the number of corpses have surpassed the storage capacity of the mortuary adding that there is no more space to take in more bodies.

She said: “If you like we can go in and you will see that you have no space to put your leg and most of the bodies are now on the floor. We receive at least two corpses every day and you know that there is a ban on burial ceremonies because of the COVID-19 and as a result of that people are not coming to claim the bodies of their late relatives.

“We are paid N30, 000 monthly without hazard allowance and they do not pay us call duty allowance.

Even there is no accommodation for us when you are on night duty. All we do is to sleep here on this bench under the mango tree. “What we have inside there is over two hundred corpses for a mortuary that was built for not more than hundred corpses and there is no arrangement to guarantee our safety.” At the General Hospital, Onitsha, the morticians, who refused to have their names in print, told Sunday Telegraph that the number is over five hundred.

Hear the source: “What do you want me to tell you about? You can go in and count the number of corpses there and we do not have the facilities to take care of the corpses and prevent them from decomposing.

“Government should make special provisions for us that work in the mortuaries during this COVID-19 period because people are no longer organising funerals.

“The chemicals that we use are not enough and after working with the chemical you will continue to cough and it causes heart problems and sometimes you find it difficult to sleep because your eyes are affected by the chemicals we work with. “Some people even bring decomposing corpses to the mortuary and we go through hell to put them in order and nobody cares about it.

“The government made provisions for most health workers during this COVID-19 lockdown but for us in the mortuaries nobody cares about us.” Morticians at Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi told this reporter that they pray daily for the coronavirus pandemic to end in order to decongest the over filled mortuaries.

“I cannot tell you the number of corpses in the mortuary but it is too many. Even those in the private hospitals come to ask us if there   is space and we do not have space and no arrangement is being made to handle the situation.” An undertaker, who gave his name as Fidelis Izuchukwu, told Sunday Telegraph that most of his colleagues have started making arrangements for the safe keeping of the corpses.

“The mortuaries no longer have space and some of us are making arrangements to put up small mortuaries to salvage the situation and we even invite morticians to do embalmment at home because they don’t have space,” he explained.

The Enugu Ukwu Mortuary, which last year was razed by fire, is facing a similar experience. According to a staff at the hospital many people now keep corpses at home or at a make shift mortuary in private hospitals where the workers are not enough to handle the number of corpses there.

When contacted the Commissioner for Health Dr Vincent Okpala said that the government hospitals have well equipped mortuary facilities adding that government has made adequate provisions for the preservation of corpses during this pandemic. Incidentally, the same scenario is playing out some 500 kilometres away in Lagos where the state governor, Mr Babajide Sanwo- Olu last week issues a two-week ultimatum for peopled to bury their loved ones or have them be massed buried.

He said government was constrained to take this drastic step because mortuaries in the state were filled to capacity due to the lockdown that had prevented burials from taking place last month.